Clean Industrial Act helps public buyers move towards non-price criteria

On February 26th, the European Commission (EC) presented its Clean Industrial Deal (CID) to strengthen  European industries’ competitiveness and accelerate the decarbonisation of the economy. It aims at ensuring  access to affordable energy, boost demand for decarbonised products, stimulate private and public investment in the clean transition, secure access to raw materials, promote circularity, reskill the workforce, and foster international partnerships that ensure a level playing field with non-European competitors.

Public procurement will support the implementation of the Clean Industrial Deal. It is an important tool for overcoming barriers to market entry, the development and sustenance of sustainable industrial ecosystems, job creation and value. As such, the Clean Industrial Deal will require public buyers to work more with targeted mandates and non-price criteria for resilience and sustainability, ensuring that public spending advances innovation, sustainability, prosperity and the creation of high-quality jobs.

To ensure that public procurement moves beyond price criteria, the European Commission is planning to present a proposal for the Industrial Decarbonisation Accelerator Act by the end of 2025. The Act, part of the broader Clean Industrial Deal, will seek to foster clean, resilient, circular and cybersecure European supply for energy-intensive sectors. The EC believes that this should “strengthen demand for EU-made clean products, building on the experience of the Net Zero Industry Act for clean tech, promoting innovation as well as EU environmental and social standards and ensuring a level playing field.”

In addition, the European Commission has announced a revision of the 2014 Public Procurement Directives. This revision, for which proposals are planned to be presented by the end of 2026, will envisage the use of sustainability, resilience and European preference criteria in strategic sectors. As the EU notes, the revision should “clarify and consolidate the interactions between public procurement provisions across different pieces of legislation, to simplify application by contracting authorities. All levels of administration, from national to local, should be able to use them. These criteria will also be extended to incentivise private procurement, through measures such as lifecycle-based CO2 emission performance standards.”

For more information, please visit the Clean Industrial Deal website.